From 1942 the regular home of the Westminster Fellowship of ministers was at Westminster Chapel. Until last Monday that is. We have moved to Westminster Baptist Church in Horseferry Road, for economic reasons.
We were given a very warm welcome and about 40 men turned up - about twice as many as usual - to hear Garry Williams, director of the John Owen Centre. His subject was 'Contemporary Roman Catholicism'. His thesis was, simply, that Roman Catholicism has changed in the last fifty years, but not for the better. What one has now is both an insistence on the traditional (and in the same crucial areas false) doctrines, and a reaching out to embrace not only the separated brethren and 'anonymous Christians' of other Christian denominations and other religions, but of no religion at all. Nature has been 'graced' and Rome is the proper goal of all grace on earth, so Rome will draw in all recipients of grace. Her tentacles have never been so extended nor so strong; we are but iron filings irresistibly drawn towards the voracious magnet that is Rome. The beast looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon...
That this is a postmodern mix of contradictions does not of course worry Rome as in the end (the eschatological end, the synthesis of all things), everything will be hers. All roads, as never before, lead to Rome, even if they seem at present to be leading in totally opposite directions.
The source Garry relies on is Leonardo di Chirico and it is a lucid, compelling and good summary of the present post Vatican II scene. I could not help but see the same framework in embryo in lectures given in the 1960s by Francis Schaeffer after he visited, as an observer, some sessions of the Vatican II council.
We had useful discussion and questions afterwards.
It seemed a bit of a rebirth for the Fellowship, in terms of a new venue and numbers present. May it long continue.
Our next meeting is a 'fellowship' meeting with no speaker but discussion on subjects raised by the members, on 3rd March.
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